Both the Wilcox Chargers and Santa Clara Bruins baseball teams should consider their 2025 baseball seasons a stupendous success. While the 2025 Bruins get to call themselves CCS Champions, the 2025 Chargers have every reason to keep their heads up high. Despite dropping their Division II Championship, Wilcox persevered against an extremely tough gauntlet of teams and simply ran into one of the best pitchers in the section. For a team that started out the season slowly, finishing as runner-up in Division II of the CCS is right up there with any of the school’s top finishes of the past 20 to 25 years.
After a three-game losing streak dropped the Chargers’ record to 5-7 on April 2, Wilcox proceeded to win 13 games in a row. The double-digit streak was only snapped by a singular loss to the then-undefeated Los Gatos Wildcats. It was a game in which the Chargers were the better team for the majority of the afternoon, doomed only by one disastrous inning.
Wilcox bounced back in the following game, defeating the Wildcats in the league season finale. The Chargers then opened the playoffs as a No. 5 seed and crushed a tough West Catholic Athletic League opponent in the Archbishop Mitty Monarchs, 12-3.
In round two, the Chargers easily handled No. 8 seed Capuchino, 8-2. In the championship, Wilcox lost to a Hollister pitcher who finished the season without allowing a single earned run all season.
“We came in 10th place overall, second place in DII is pretty darn impressive,” remarked Chargers Manager Matt Huth. “That’s something I’m definitely going to remind the kids. I’d much rather them have the opportunity to play in DII and lose to a guy that is going to Cal next year, who was throwing 92 MPH. It was 3-0, but we were in that game.”
Wilcox seniors Matty Tiendas, RJ Argel, Justin Forster, Mateo Escobedo, Diego Prado, Steven Tran, Kohei Jumonji, Isaac Read and Jake Prettol have every reason to look back fondly on a tremendous senior year of baseball.
For the Santa Clara Bruins, the team’s historic season should not be discounted for any reason whatsoever. As the saying goes in sports, you can only play the games on your schedule, and Santa Clara nearly went wire to wire as a first-place team.
The Bruins ended up setting a school record in wins with 27 en route to the school’s first-ever CCS Championship in baseball. Not too long ago, the Bruins were considered a perennial B-division team that simply didn’t compare to the top teams in the section. Numerous wins and impressive performances against A-league teams this season, including a win against Leigh, who was the No. 1 seed in Division II, have proven that the Bruins are a no-doubt-about-it, A-league program that can compete with the best of the best in the section.
“Watching these kids was kind of torture, like the 2010 Giants,” chuckled Bruins Manager Pedro Martinez. “I wanted it for these guys so bad. Such a great group, special group. I was hoping deep down inside for most of the season that we could finish it off with a CCS title.”
Congratulations to seniors John Kepner, Andrew Traffas, Connor Houle, Jonathan Young, Charles Conley, Drew Diffenderfer, Jaxton Chao, Greg Salgado and Ryan Trujillo on making school history in their final seasons.
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